Sanctuary's People

With just a couple of breaks I'm been writing recently about sanctuary.  I want to expand our appreciation for it as something more than a space on church property.  Part of how I've understood it is to look at those things we do and say that create a sense of togetherness or holiness or safety.  Even my mom's struggle with "fun-damn-mentalists" was a struggle for sanctuary at 1612 College Ave., for her family, for her church and for her own sense of holiness.

All this consideration has me realizing that without people involved only fauna and flora get sanctuaries.  When we name such provisions we are talking almost entirely about a place of safety for something that would be more endangered otherwise.  That is the basic version of sanctuary and one that we each can understand easily.

Fences, markers, ridges and rivers are those boundary makers we have in common with snail darters, owls, wolves, etc.  But there is another set of boundary-making that informs our religious lives.

The first boundary story with God in it is the one that has Adam and Eve and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  God said "Don't eat of it!"  Along comes the serpent and subtlety into the mix.  You can see the human struggle when they exaggerate God's command saying "if we touch it we die!"  After they eat the forbidden fruit they are expelled and made to work for holiness/ sanctuary outside that garden. Our lives still have boundary issues when it comes to God's presence.

Fast forward to Pentecost and the markers for sanctuary were ethnic and geographical.  It starts, "When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place."  And when the Holy Spirit enters, those comforting markers of nationality and language are breached and a message of God's presence becomes a sanctuary for "Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs.

Seems like whenever God needs, God will redefine holiness through us.  Yes there are physical and geographical boundaries, think Red Sea or the River Jordan. But whenever God moves those markers it always has something to do with us and our relationship with God.

Fast forward one more time to the present and you can see another way that place and people and holiness and sanctuary are at play.  For us it shows up in history with things like plaques and memorials.  It shows up with our precious and aging church that feels like no other place in town and whose doors unlocked say "whoever needs may enter into God's presence."

After that our markers are smaller and more actuarial.  We list baptized members and those confirmed -- through reception, reaffirmation or transfer -- communicants. We list those who have made a pledge in previous years and those are givers of record.  We email newsletters and announcements to all these folks and just about anybody who wants.  We have a hard time removing people from our lists.

Every year at this time we have to find those folks whose listing includes them as confirmed, communicants, in good standing, having made and kept a pledge in the previous year just to serve on our vestry.  Rest assured there is a sense among each member of "being called" to service but none would dare assume a greater holiness than any one of us.

Thanks be to God our holiness is marked first and foremost FOR us and we are invited into God's company no matter the boundaries our denominations use to account for us.  As well we needn't confuse our markers with God's.  If you want to check on or change how your membership is registered or listed just call the office.  But let's stay mindful of the difference between our markers and God's.  It'll work for us to honor God's calling and to hope to be worthy of the holiness that is God's gift to us.

All Saints' - tide

Our calendar is running out of days.  The liturgical year with its emphasis in Luke's gospel will give way to Matthew in the days between November 24 and December 1.  From Year C to Year A on Sundays and from Year 1 to Year 2 in our Daily Office readings.

Since 1979 and the "new" BCP we have been living together with Sunday celebrations of Holy Eucharist as our anchoring worship.  More recently we've joined with several other denominations and have relied on the Revised Common Lectionary to inform our preaching in the context of regular Sunday table fellowship.

The RCL nearly matches the schedule in the back of our prayer books.  Differing most remarkably by providing two options for the set of readings that accompany the gospel: Track 1 and Track 2.
Our General Convention 2006 started our transition to its use through periods of experimental, to provisional and now authorized practices.  Our bulletin inserts have almost seamlessly led us into this current usage of Track 1 of the RCL.  Raise your hand if you haven't noticed.

These schedules are not frivolous inventions of some ivory tower elite or some obscure saint.  For Sundays, both our BCP lectionary and the RCL are the results of a prayerfully shared labor of hundreds of scholars working over several decades.

Two overarching concerns have informed their work:  effectively staging the drama and message focused in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth AND equipping worshippers to live in the world from a commitment begun in Holy Baptism and renewed in regular celebrations of Holy Eucharist.

The curtain on Luke's account is about to close but not until we recognize an ironic triumph.  Christ the King, as the last Sunday of the liturgical year is known, has as it's informing text the moment just before Jesus dies on Calvary's cross between the two thieves.  The sign over his cross says King of the Jews and from that cross he grants passage into paradise for one of the thieves.

That's how this life, death, resurrection drama works.  We tell the story from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, from glorified manger to empty tomb, beloved Son to Lord sitting at God's right hand.  We tell it regularly in the context of a meal shared through broken bread and common cup.  It's what it means when he said -- and we recall his saying every week -- "do this in remembrance of me."

These next few Sundays take us into a glory like no other.  I call these few weeks "All Saints'-tide."  It's not official in any way.  Instead it is a mnemonic device to help me look as these last days of the year as rising and fulfilling, as completing and proclaiming, as a crescendo just before the curtain drops and reopens right next to where we started last year and the the year before that and the year before that and . . .

Thanks to Luke for telling this year's story like only a Luke could.  Matthew?  We'll see you in a month.

The Church's Halloween

Several of my friends have made mention of how the movement from holiday to holiday is now subject to a accelerating commercial influence.  So much so that sales figures have given Halloween a larger and larger share of retail space and time.  I laughed when one of my friends complained that a big box retailer was allowing Christmas to encroach on the ghosts and goblins.  My question is how to find a way to make a costume out of a "sales figure." Just kidding.

It has always been that way that popular culture and church calendars have danced back and forth with when and how to make their observances.  Until the puritans took their turn pruning the faith in dear old England it was common for whole villages depending on the observance or celebration to join in parading statues of the Virgin Mary or replicas of the Holy Cross with thuribles and choirs making the way.

We see those sorts of customs still in our neighbors to the south: The Day of the Dead or as it is known to us anglophiles Día de los Muertos. I have a mask in my office made for the occasion that was gifted to me by a UGA student who was fortunate enough to be in Mexico on the holiday.  It's creepy.

Our own American appropriations are not very informative of much of the theological or spiritual potential.  Instead we have cared for how our children have fun and are safe "trick or treating."  And the adult observances are beholding to baby-sitters aplenty watching those same children so the parents can go on their "Wild Rumpuses." Like I said, lots of fun but not a lot of theology there.

So this coming Thursday we will gather our youth and greet the trick-or-treaters that come by our parish house, decorate a pumpkin or two and then make our way through the nearby Madison Cemetery after sharing a liturgy proper to All Hallow's Eve from the Book of Occasional Services.
Our prayers will include naming those for whom we give God thanks because they showed us how to be faithful in their being holy through their living AND their dying.

Our observance is not a celebration but a solemn and prayerful way to acknowledge that God is God of the living AND the dead. We expect there to be a reverence and awe invited and nurtured by our  liturgy that over time may replace or at least contrast the silliness and "wild rumpusing" that we have substituted through our popular customs.  If not reverence perhaps a curiosity or two about the night and how it might be more spiritual, might actually help us be more faithful ourselves.

Halloween may deserve its own space away from culture's and commerce's other nearby holidays but it also needs to stay connected to those greater observances of All Saints' Day and All Faithful Departed.  Popular culture gave us what became the Church's All Saints' Day.  Christians found a way to give God the glory through their version.  We can still do that too!

Sanctuary's Sharing

I missed church this past Sunday. Thanks to The Rev. Beth Long for the supply.  Instead, I drove with some alumnae friends to Furman and remembered and commended to God's eternal care one Betty Alverson in a worship service led by Furman classmate, Bishop Stacy Sauls

"Miss A" directed operations and programs of the Student Center, Furman's "Third Person/Building of the campus Trinity" along with our Library and the Dining Hall.  Betty's work from that building changed lives that in most instances didn't know they needed changing.

Most of us were attending her memorial because of her CESC, Collegiate Educational Service Corps and how our turns at volunteering through it to the larger Greenville and Upstate community awakened something within us.  Alumni from the 60's to the 90's shared memories about Miss A and time after time named the changes we recognized in ourselves because of her influence and leadership.

Miss A had a way of taking our privilege -- there's that word again -- and leveraging it for all those "others" around Furman. Most of us didn't know it was happening until it did.  And it did in some unforgettable ways.  Unforgettable because it moved us from our smaller private lives of being good individuals into a much larger collective effort for a more open and fair community that found and celebrated opportunity, self-confidence and a second chance at life for others.

We were volunteers.  That was how it worked.  No judge ordered us there, no registrar listed extra credit hours for us, no society bestowed ribbons or honors at graduation.

Student volunteers staffed the Boys and Girls Clubs, city parks and playgrounds, reading and mentoring programs, suicide hotlines, crisis centers, nursing homes, residential care facilities for the mentally and physically disabled, small church youth groups and more and more!

And it changed us.  Lord knows some of us needed it. But the better part of that transformation was less a personal gain and more an awakening to a collective potential.  Theologically you would call it the Kingdom of God coming near.  As we lived out from under from our over-privileged cocoons and worked and breathed and sweated and cried with Greenville's under-privileged and under-served others we were joined into God's shalom -- a commonwealth of shared resources and mutual interest.

How could it not change us? 17 year-old -- back then we called them -- coeds answering phones hoping to help someone avoid suicide.  Brainy pre-law students holding hands with adults whose own brains could not form words.  Small town valedictorians thrust into making urgent, one-on-one appeals to mayors and governors!  Again, how could it not change us?

As we shared memories and remarks at the luncheon, almost to a person you could see a larger world had been brought into focus.  Our interests had become less personal and now remained more communal, were less about our individual salvation and more about realizing heaven on earth, less about "Jesus loves me, this I know," and more about "Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world!"

Thanks to Miss A's sometimes edgy, sometimes flat, clearly not-Southern, always honest and sternly prophetic confidence in and expectation of us, the world around Furman was changed with us and became a little closer to the Kingdom of God. Thank you, Miss A! And thanks be to God!

Sanctuary's Privilege

The word privilege is a hot button these days.  It has always had an edge to it. Or perhaps better said, a boundary.  It comes from Latin through French and was first a legal term that expressed the difference between those to whom the general laws and customs pertained and those who benefited from "private laws."

Add to that history our own "American" story of revolution against the Lords and a King, of economic struggles both agrarian and industrial, of doughboys and GI's (read citizen soldiers) and grandparents with Depression memories saving string and wrapping paper and what you get is permission for every one of us to bristle against the label "privileged."

But it is a sneaky, in some cases poisonous trick that has us recoiling against that truth about ourselves.  Since 2012 it has only taken $34,000 per person per year to qualify an individual as within the global 1%.  For a household of 4 that amount would be $136,000.*  So it is important to understand that income plays the role it plays but there are other factors.

For instance, most of us have a way of recognizing a group of people with wealth greater than our own. We can imagine a middle income space to put ourselves below "them" and above others.  The global measures cited above should trigger some caution in our estimations.  When roughly 30% of those gaining $34k/year worldwide are citizens of U.S. it's easy to notice how quickly skewed our scale becomes.

As I said there are other factors we must take into account because that thing we call privilege is not simply a function of wealth.  The button gets hotter when you add race to the formula.  Besides, the word race is it's own hot button.  But we can learn something here that should help us understand an effect of those privileges created by income.

Most of us reject labels like racist or privileged because of an internal measure.  We don't intend prejudice and from within our own thoughts and feelings read what feels like fairness or at least a polite restraint.  I can feel my mother's firm but silent grip guiding me to the "white only" water fountain in 1960 Anderson, SC.

And there it is. Privilege and prejudice are not just private laws that can be practiced by personal pieties or polite mindsets.  They are systemic.  Every limit or boundary from which nearly all of us benefit puts someone else away.  That's what the other side of private means.  And because they are systemic, they demand of us -- call us the 30% -- more than a bite of the tongue or a donation to a cause.

There is a world that needs us to do more than that.  We are the system just as much as we are its beneficiaries.  Our thinking must reach towards justice and stop measuring from within our own private laws/lives those individual "repairs" of privilege and prejudice.

There will be times, there have already been too many of them when we expect our church to provide us a place away from the world.  Only if we return with a renewed resolve to sacrifice more of our own lives can the church be our sanctuary.  That's our privilege: to find nourishment and rest so that we can turn the arc of our moral universe toward justice.**

* https://money.cnn.com/2012/01/04/news/economy/world_richest/index.htm
**MLK, Jr. paraphrase of Theodore Parker d.1860 -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Parker

Holiness' Location

I remember having a conversation with a Baptist pastor friend, years ago.  It was about an argument in his church about where the flags should be displayed.  Those being the U.S. flag and the Christian flag. He wanted them out of the building entirely! Some Baptists are "big" on separation of church and state.

He was interested that we allow our flags, U.S. and Episcopal, to stand in the back.  I told him my story about the Sunday we processed our flags behind the cross and I preached from the pulpit so that my words could be directed to the U.S. flag standing just to the side.

As we talked we recognized a difference in how our denominations understood and used the word sanctuary.  For him it described the worship space and included the entirety of its interior.

Our language was different and reserved sanctuary to name that much smaller space behind the altar where the reserved sacraments are kept.  Specifically in our practice: in a box, also called an aumbry (ambry to some). The word sanctuary itself can be applied to a kind of ornate container, often brass or plated with silver or gold.

What that difference exposes is interesting.  Using last week's "place of holiness" as our definition, what does it say about our churches that sanctuary can differ so much in its identifying a place of holiness? And how is holiness held such that a sanctuary can be a whole building or just a small box in a building?

Part of an answer is to acknowledge the places our denominations hold on the spectrum of sacramental theology.  Episcopalians are a sacramental people, along with Orthodox, Catholic and to a lesser degree Lutherans.  That's our end of the spectrum.

On the Baptist end and beyond are Quakers, Christian Scientists, Mormons, Congregationalists, and most "non-denominational" groups.  In between you'll find Presbyterians, Methodist, Church of Christ and most reformed theology groups.  Pardon my imprecision but the point is to say that our differences may find their expression in how we decide to display flags but they originate in a deeply foundational beginning.

They are also expressed in how these different denominations practice communion.  On our end you'll find wine used exclusively and as you move through Baptist practice you'll see more grape juice and eventually no communion at all!

For us holiness is found in a practiced sense of Christ's presence in the bread broken and wine shared as body and blood. Beyond Eucharist how would you locate holiness, except in the people gathered?  Heck, most of a Quaker meeting is just that, a gathering.  And so it makes some sense for my friend that sanctuary means the entirety of his church's worship interior.

So . . . sanctuary means different things to different denominations but one thing that it means to all denominations is that holiness should have a place in our lives.

Sanctuary's Interruption

It has not happened that often but on several occasions during our "welcome and announcements" a member of the congregation has addressed the assembly with more than a date for an event, invitation to join a group, or news on the health of a parishioner.

Some of you will remember the Sunday following the shootings in El Paso and Dayton how two of our men shared their concerns and fears with us.  We prayed for God to help us respond as servants and prayed that prayer attributed to St. Francis.

Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen. (BCP, page 833)

Just one or two were challenged by that interruption to our routine and remarked later that they weren't ready for that sort of discomfort in church.  Maybe it felt too "political" for them or was too much like the "news."

Praying helped restore some of that feeling we want "church" to have: safe, clear, happy, still.  The big word is sanctuary, It means place of holiness.  We've learned to include safe in that sense because we understand that the strength of God's presence is from where the holiness comes.

Sharing an understanding of sanctuary as not only holy but safe means different things to different people.  For all of us there is that sense of safe as AWAY from outside trouble.  But for a few of us safe means that we can risk even more vulnerability inside with each other.

This past Sunday was another one of those "interruptions." A long-time member shared his epiphany and joy that came from all the words of concern and encouragement he had received since he had shared the news of his cancer.  It was uplifting for all of us.

Again we prayed but this time to thank God for the ministry we had received in Alex's witness to us.  Yes we all want his cancer gone but we also prayed to thank God for how we saw Him in the light and spirit of a beloved member.

So it is sort of a chicken or egg question.  Which comes first holiness or safety?  Every answer is correct by the way. The other thought to consider is the role of interruption in our lives with God.  Johan Metz's "shortest definition" of religion was just that, interruption. (J. B. Metz, Faith in History and Society. Towards a practical fundamental theology, Mainz, 1977, p. 150)

For sure there is more to it, including the work we do between such interruptions.  But work we must and making a way for those interruptions is our calling as a church.

Freedom's Prayer

Most of my writing this summer has been in and out of an attention on the First Amendment and those stories that inform us regarding the special place "the church" occupies in our civil life.  As I said earlier our responsibility to speak as a church in that broader civil discourse is based on an authority derived by our constituent citizens/members, thanks to the First Amendment.

A disestablished church is only that.  It still gathers, instructs, invokes, comforts, counsels, feeds, trains and worships.  In our case, most of what was the Church OF England in the colonies remained and became the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America.  Disestablished but reorganized and distinguished from its past of a Crown's endorsement and Parliament's direction.
Perhaps no denomination demonstrates more clearly the difference our First Amendment intends.

From the preface of the first BCP 1789:

But when in the course of Divine Providence, these American States became independent with respect to civil government, their ecclesiastical independence was necessarily included; and the different religious denominations of Christians in these States were left at full and equal liberty to model and organize their respective Churches, and forms of worship, and discipline, in such manner as they might judge most convenient for their future prosperity; consistently with the constitution and laws of their country. 

The attention of this Church was in the first place drawn to those alterations in the Liturgy which became necessary in the prayers for our Civil Rulers, in consequence of the Revolution. And the principal care herein was to make them conformable to what ought to be the proper end of all such prayers, namely, that “Rulers may have grace, wisdom, and understanding to execute justice, and to maintain truth;” and that the people “may lead quiet and peaceable lives, in all godliness and honesty.”

 It's a wonderful history and beginning and it echoes the hopes held before independence was won.  The end -- read intent -- of all prayer from the Church for its nation should be for those in authority, now held through election to "have grace, wisdom, and understanding to execute justice, and to maintain truth."

Given the contentions that drove colonists to rebel we should be mindful that the intent that the people “may lead quiet and peaceable lives, in all godliness and honesty” goes much deeper than those same aspirations might today.

But how deep those aspirations go is entirely up to us and it will not do for us to settle into our privileged comforts as long as there is poverty and suffering around us.  It is this very disestablishment that expects us all to speak toward our "governors" so their understanding can "execute justice and maintain truth."

Yes we do our part from our own godliness and honesty.  Think Panda Packs.  But our prayers are meant to be heard especially those for our "Civil Rulers."  Our prayers and our voices are meant to be heard especially when we see injustice twisting our commonwealth into classes of rich and poor or dishonesty sinking our government into parties of power and suppression.

Our current BCP provides an alternative to the proper Collect for Independence Day.  Maybe we can help it be heard:

Lord God Almighty, you have made all the peoples of the earth for your glory, to serve you in freedom and in peace: Give to the people of our country a zeal for justice and the strength of forbearance, that we may use our liberty in accordance with your gracious will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (BCP, p. 258)

Belonging's Localities

“If you go to Atlanta, the first question people ask you is, "What's your business?" In Macon they ask, "Where do you go to church?" In Augusta they ask your grandmother's maiden name. But in Savannah the first question people ask you is "What would you like to drink?”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

I've always had an interest and respect for "local custom" just like author Berendt shared.  Not only does it provide a shortcut to understanding, with it dangers of stereotyping and prejudice, but it also helps to navigate the world in and between these environs.

In most cases local custom is the property of those "landed" gentlepersons or long-time residents who can answer Augusta's question for instance with Walton or Fannin. But ownership is not so strictly defined such that a little mystery can't also be engaged in the protection and maintenance of those customs.

My respect for local custom has matured while being a priest in the Episcopal Church.  With our Book of Common Prayer much of what I do is "prescribed." But I have yet to serve -- especially in worship leadership -- the same way in two places.

Just like Berendt's cities each parish has its customs and ownership of those customs is just as mysterious.  Advent has it's local customs, too.

For instance, our practice of kneeling for the Collect of the Day at the beginning of Sunday's Eucharists is not one I've seen anywhere else in the church.  The only source I can imagine would have been from those days of re-founding that relied on lay leadership and Morning Prayer according to the 1928 BCP would have had just about all prayers prayed while kneeling.

Somehow that practice has survived into these years of priests present every Sunday, a "new" prayerbook, and several "stints" of service by the same priest inclined toward their own habits and standards.   The cloud of mystery fades and most often I see Graham Ponder in vestments saying "The Lord be with you."

My favorite "local custom" was the one of providing a small glass of vodka on the credence table as an antiseptic aid to cleaning the vessels after communion.  I'm NEVER saying where I encountered that "mystery."

I'm sure there'd be no complaint if one were asked Macon's question in Atlanta or Savannah's in Augusta.  But these customs are local for a reason.  There are stories to be told. There is an aspiration or hope behind them.  There are memories and griefs shared.  At their best they are empowered as much by love as fear, as much to invite as to exclude.

It's not easy but belonging means living through some "bad" answers and waiting for a turn to ask the question back of the "gentry" so they can tell their stories, too.  So when we ask Advent's question -- I don't know what it is -- let's hope for belonging to be answer.

Forgiveness' Freedom

It was 18 years ago.  That means there are first year college students who have known no other world but the one punctuated for us by those planes and those towers and mostly those lives lost.  I'm still frightened by the memory.

What an incredible imagination, hardly anything but evil could have schemed so well to accomplish such a horror.  It seems our national defenses overt and covert are still learning how to deal with the "bin Ladens" who remain and continue to scheme.

There is no way to isolate the actions mass or singular of any terrorist.  Sadly it is not always their evil that begins the bombing, the shooting, the kidnapping.  They will almost always have some sense of injustice, some other's evil to redress that ends in what seems like a constant horror now.

Some of what I see now is a gift from God.  That is my having a perspective that protects me from a confusion of my own ego, my faith, and my citizenship.  I am not the one from whom forgiveness comes for those murderous acts.  But I surely have what God provides through me.

I wish this were case for all of those who lost a beloved family member or friend in the attack and its aftermath but for me one gift of forgiveness is that it frees me a little from the horror and it's haunting.  I do not have to remain afraid or only see those actors as of an evil for which we have no protection.  The gift extends and makes it possible to think about why it all happened.  Because God is the source of love and freedom I don't have to be afraid.

And so I'm asking a hard question; one that still triggers fear in many of the people I love. But here it is: what have we learned about ourselves, our nation, our culture, our place in the world that could be deemed an injustice permitting that retribution or even more so needing God's forgiveness?

I'm not asking about our response, most of it was heroic and courageous.  Some of it was misguided.

I'm asking about who "we" were to the world before those cells were empowered, before those passports were stamped, before those flying lessons were taught, before the tickets were bought. And I'm asking about who we can become.

Because of who God is I'm not afraid to ask.  Because of who God is I know I can still make a difference in that world and do more than push my chest out in a bravado that too often imitates patriotism.  I can forgive. 

And after that,  I can look for those ways we set a stage; not by ourselves but still with a presumption that all we did was meant for good.  Or at least enough "for good" that it covered our sins.  As if that's how goodness works.

Because of who God is I know that forgiveness exists, that it works, that it works for me, and for us too.  God is the source of love and freedom and because of who God is the whole world can be forgiven.  Without that forgiveness we may never really know why.

The Road's Freedom

Most of you know that I am making my way to Bozeman, MT this week to visit with my daughter and her beau as she begins her third year of college studies now a Montana State Bobcat.  She has made this part of the world as much her home as any having worked her fifth summer at Yellowstone.

I've made a trip like this three times.  Once in the famous "platform Saab," my first Prius, my second Prius and now my third (last?) Prius.  I've posted my itinerary on the parish Facebook page.  Wednesday is the longest haul from Black River Falls, Wisconsin to Theodore Roosevelt NP in far western North Dakota.

I travel without the benefit of the radio.  Silence or talking to myself is the mode.  A bunch of what happens is straight up prayer.  God gets to hear everything with every emotion and every "tone" of voice.  I've even had to pull off to let the tears flow.

There's something about being by myself, with just enough occupation on the road and my driving to minimize those distractions that plague my hyper mind.   Walking my labyrinth does the same for me.

The freedom of those miles that I love has much less to do with distance or only being encumbered by an itinerary but much much more with a sense that it's just me and God.  Sometimes I let God have a say. (winking emoji) To me that means I've got a lot less in the way.  Things like self defense or trying to win an argument.

Every time I've gone on one of these trips I've come back with some clarity or understanding that I had not packed.  I'm getting to where I intend for that happen.  I don't want to jinx it so I'll stop. (same emoji)

Some of my sense of freedom is that I am with God on this road.  It connects me to the first name for those crazy Christians: the People of the Way.  It's still true that when we are moving forward WITH God we share a freedom like no other.

I'll be back September 13 excited about the road WE are on and how God is with us.

The Truth's Bell

Our church has a modest bell in its steeple.  Much smaller than the Morgan County Courthouse bell that is my constant companion in the rectory.  Still it rings with sufficient charm on those occasions like weddings and Easter and with some solemnity when we are laying a loved one to rest.  We're inconsistent in our practice but that is not the bell's fault.

On this past Sunday a small group of parishioners and friends gathered to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of slaves in Jamestown, Virginia.  I had cobbled together a liturgy of prayers and a pledge to action centered around a hymn whose words could be sung to a tune we had just used earlier in worship that morning.

We took turns and while the rest of us said our prayers and sang this hymn we pulled that stiff little rope to ring the bell at least 400 times:

Let press, let pulpit thunder
In all slave−holders’ ears
Till they disgorge the plunder
They’ve garnered up for years;
Till Mississippi’s valley,
Till Carolina’s coast,
Round Freedom’s standard rally,
A vast, a ransomed host!*

Important to several of us including some who were not attending is the accuracy of the claims about slavery's beginnings in "America."  My heart is settled that our claim of a 400 year history is damning enough such that other beginnings or practices in other settlements, that other competing histories or claims only reinforce the judgement.  Slavery should never have been, period.

That it gets the mention it does from the great missionary Paul as a standard of society and culture out-gained indeed undone by the saving act of Christ Jesus is indication enough that it has gone on too long.  Our 400 or whatever number of years it "really" is observance is more modest than our bell.

The truth is that humans can and have been horribly sinful and have from the beginning found ways to subject one class below another.

The number of years in our commemoration do not just speak of a shameful past.  They speak just as loudly -- the truth's bell is ringing -- to turn our attention to our current sins against each other.

Part of our liturgy was edited from prayers for those children enslaved in a sex trade actively practiced right here in Georgia, most likely even Morgan County.  Part of our liturgy named the horrible remainders of Jim Crow still infecting our right to vote.  Part of our liturgy begged for us to make a difference now.

So the truth is not so much undone by competing histories.  All of them are damning!  But our bell can also ring for more than commemorations.  It can and should ring to say to God "save us!"  It can and should ring to proclaim God's power over our histories, over our divisions, over our sins past and present.  The truth's bell is ringing and like Paul it is proclaiming:

. . . for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:26-28 NRSV)

*John Pierpont (April 6, 1785 – August 27, 1866) was an American poet, who was also successively a teacher, lawyer, merchant, and Unitarian minister. His most famous poem is The Airs of Palestine.

The Conversation's Source

From last week, "We are called to join in civic/civil discourse just like we are called to love.  Indeed that is when the people of the church are at their best, when we speak the truth in love. (Ephesians 4:15)"

There are lots of ways a conversation from love shows itself.  Perhaps most obvious is what we used to call "good manners."  You'd have to be living in a cave to miss how much of those practices are missing in our current public discourse.  

As much as we may lament their absence there is more to our speaking the truth in love than good manners.  That is to say that love is more than a style element.  It is an anchor, a foundation, a strength, a source.  Many conversations that are missing their manners can still be sustained to finding a point of resolution and learning for both parties when start with love. 

Indeed, it is incumbent upon us to trust the source of love more than any style when the topic is hard.  Violations of "manners" or social custom have long been a way for the powerful to silence the powerless. Sometimes the asking itself is the violation no matter how the question is presented.  I think about that moment in the film "Oliver" when he approaches Mr. and Mrs. Bumble for "more."  No one asks for more! Conversation over!

When love is the source of what we say it shapes much of how we say it.  But love -- especially love in our public discourse -- has many pretenders.  For instance, fear can generate passions that we confuse with love.  

It takes trust to let love find its voice in us.  And we have to be honest about ourselves when we are love's intended delivery system.  None of us is worthy except and until love chooses us.  

St. Paul was often writing to communities at odds with each other and he came to understand the value of love as more than a delivery system or style or feeling.  We miss what he said in his letter to the Corinthians when we hear read at weddings.  "Without love/ἀγάπην I am a noisy gong."

Paul is talking to a community at odds with itself and he is talking about talking.  What he says is an excellent guide for us as fellow parishioners or for whenever we are joined to that broader civic/civil discourse that waits on us and begs for this love.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. I Corinthians 13:4-8a 

The Freedoms' Protections

I heard it said more than once and have said it myself, "The church would be perfect it weren't for all these people."  Laughing at that remark is a sign of health, by the way.   Interestingly it hangs on an assumption that there can be such a thing as church without its "constituating" people.

Certainly the church lives with lots of objects or artifacts that would still remain if all the members were removed.  The Bible itself is chief among those "artifacts."  There has been a centuries' long debate about it.

It's sort of a "chicken or egg" question.  Is scripture -- and in our case that is the Bible -- a product of what we now call the Church?  Or does scripture have a priority -- we call it inspired for a reason -- that when read and "obeyed" produces a community of faith.  

No matter where you might stand on that question, tomorrow waits on both scripture and its readers to decide how to live through faith with one another.  If we fail to live with one another then scripture is subject to our individual idiosyncrasies.  To each his/her own.  If we leave it behind then our shared faithfulness -- no matter how earnest -- has no standard.  Think Amos' "plumbline."

The same can be said of our First Amendment freedoms.  The protections of free exercise, speech, press, assembly, and petition wait on our practice of those very freedoms.  Otherwise what good is the amendment itself?  

Yes we credit -- and rightfully so -- our brave men and women who have defended those freedoms but we could undo all with which we honor them by failing to practice the freedoms ourselves.  It is the practice itself that ratifies the amendment.  

Artifact or inspiration, scripture waits.  And does so because God is a God of love and love cannot coerce and still be love.   

God has taken and is taking a great risk in "the Church" and especially in the people upon whom God waits, to practice love.  Our Constitution also takes a risk in its people. 

Because freedom also cannot be coerced, the First Amendment waits. 

It follows for me that our church, made of its people, is well suited for participating in that practice that protects those freedoms in our Bill of Rights.   We are called to join in civic/civil discourse just like we are called to love.  Indeed that is when the people of the church are at their best, when we speak the truth in love. (Ephesians 4:15)

Let's not wait ourselves and risk the loss of love or our precious freedoms.  Let's breathe, listen, speak then breathe again.  Beseeching our God of love to guide us so that our practice remains free and helps in making a "more perfect union."

The Commonwealth's Calling

I want to continue to reflect on the interplay of church and state from that history to which I am made close through my teen-aged years in Tappahannock, VA.  But my reflection must respect the events of the past weeks which rose to a horrible crescendo in El Paso and Dayton.  We named them specifically in our prayers.  We held hands when we prayed.

As a gathered community Sunday morning we brought our anguish and holy hunger in a sublime gesture of hope and "Blessed the Backpacks" of our school children as they begin a new year of study.  There was a gift in the way our liturgy allowed for the confusion of a dozen or of so unrehearsed adolescent actors to turn into a tender moment full of humility and imagination.

We passed the Peace and settled into our places and transitioned through my notoriously rambling announcements to hear from two respected parishioners as they professed their heart-felt concern for our country, our children and our own lives.

Only during the burials of beloved parishioners like Berry, Ginger, and Charles have we been that vulnerable as a congregation.  When we closed with the prayer attributed to St. Francis I had the sense that we really wanted God to make us servants of peace.

Whenever we speak of peace in our lives we have to remember that it intends more than an absence of conflict and noise.  The Hebrew shalom/שָׁל֣וֹם means so much more and is closely kin to the historic-for-us concept of commonwealth.

Think back to how our role in a constitutionally structured discourse is to bring together and act on the new authority of citizens whose speech is protected, whose assembly is protected, whose press is protected and whose petitioning the government is protected.  The First Amendment imagines our church, actually that ALL churches empowered by protected citizens are to speak from a respect and affinity for the commonwealth.

And when we speak as the church we speak best as servants of the God of shalom.  We speak knowing the false assurances of bigger barns and abundance beyond our use.  God says "your life is required!"

God is calling us!  Calling us everyday! There is no security or privilege that frees us from this calling!  We honor the spirits of the past like Berry, Ginger and Charles and countless others as we move forward into a community, a nation, a world desperate for shalom.

It will not do for us to be silent or to add to the partisan noise or to assure ourselves falsely with bigger barns. "This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?" Luke 12:20

The Union's Perfection

To continue from last week: 

"It was as if the framers said we want "a church," we just want it to get its authority from somewhere other than a crown, or a senate, or a congress, or a president.  We want a citizen's church and even better, citizens' churches!  

Disestablishment and free exercise together are the germ of the American Experiment. The framers gave the world a gift.  I think we are still unwrapping it."

Part of how I am unwrapping this gift is to struggle with many different ways in which religious leaders exercise their freedoms of speech, of assembly and of petition.

I have been a member of the Poor People's Campaign for nearly four years.  The Rev. William Barber is the principal of this movement and some of you will remember his address at the Democratic Convention that nominated Hillary Clinton. The heart of our democracy needs defibrillation!

Many scoffed and some questioned the appropriateness of his inclusion in the agenda of that 2016 partisan event.   And I have heard from more than one such critic that it's hard to hear his address and not be stirred.  Many have admitted and without cynicism I among them, that the weakest part of his address was his call to support Hillary.   I'm pretty sure that was part of how his being on stage was negotiated.

I'm also among those who understand his call -- read, petition -- as larger than a political convention.  That's where all citizens' churches are at their best.  No matter our stripes -- Christian, Buddhist, Islamic, Sikh, or no religion at all -- when:

"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. . ."

It is a calling larger than our differences be they ethnic, denominational, political, economic, etc!  It is exactly the calling our first amendment intends for "citizens' churches" to sound.

How ironic that one of the greatest tests of our "American religions" is not found in any scripture. The Preamble of our Constitution as it sets forth the intent of government forces us and all churches to consider, deeply, how we are engaged in that effort to form a more perfect union.

In this era of perpetual campaigning it is nearly impossible for a "petition of the government" to be viewed as a non-partisan effort. But no matter our stripes -- political or denominational -- it is surely proper for "clergy" to petition our government and to join the civic -- sadly, not always civil -- discourse that our framers intended for all of its citizens to join.  And we join not to silence any voice especially those of other faiths or those who have no faith.  We, with them, join so that all speech is free, so that all assemblies are safe, and so that our government hears the petitions of all.

We are still unpacking this gift.  TBTG, we may never finish.

The Citizens' Church

It has been obvious to many of you that there is more to my previous occasions of writing about colonial history and the intersection of church and state.  The history has been interesting and I always enjoy the ironies, especially those that accompany my story of becoming an Episcopalian and a priest to boot. 

The story behind these histories is that of the necessity and effect of the First Amendment.  Unlicensed preachers being jailed, pulpits used to pronounce rebellion, towns providing for all denominations to worship, churches purchasing and remodeling courthouses for worship each expose a piece of that dynamic peculiar to colonial and post colonial life in our country.

Here's what was written in 1787:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

It's worth remembering that the same authority that jailed those Baptist preachers was exactly what the first clause of the amendment removes.  Until the War for Independence the Church of England, more specifically the Bishop of London was responsible for religious life in the lower colonies.  The C of E was established in Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia.  Taxes paid for clergy to serve as rectors and vicars.   

Once the war was over there was no more C of E in the states.  An already strained system that could not provide adequate clergy leadership before the war was now decimated by the loss of loyalists priests who returned home or translated to other British holdings like Canada.  But the hope of the church to foster a civic -- not always civil -- attention to and practice of moral judgement and behavior was not lost. 

The second clause of the amendment reorders the authority of the church to its constituent members by protecting their right to choose to which religion they as citizens will adhere.  The free of "free exercise" is that of each citizen.  Religion is not free, churches aren't free, we are free. 

From that first freedom, augmented by those of speech, of the press, of assembly, and of petition the church's authority is reordered, not removed.  Ours is no longer a state church with bishops retiring to the House of Lords but a citizen's church now capable of moral leadership in a new nation. 

It was as if the framers said we want "a church," we just want it to get its authority from somewhere other than a crown, or a senate, or a congress, or a president.  We want a citizen's church and even better citizens' churches! 

Disestablishment and free exercise together are the germ of the American Experiment. The framers gave the world a gift.  I think we are still unwrapping it.

The Town's Chapel

The building that was home to Beale Memorial Baptist Church was Essex County's second courthouse.  The Baptists purchased it from the county which had already occupied a newer structure.  A tower, bell and steeple were added to the front and remain to this day although the congregation has moved away to a new lot and buildings a mile north on the "the Tidewater Trail."

When those earliest Baptist preachers were jailed and tried for the offense of preaching without license the person who brought charges against them was the rector of the parish, then known as South Farnham Parish, Upper Piscataway and Lower Piscataway. 

From the history of St. John's Parish Church:

2. With roots in a church of the 1660s, known as Piscataway, the established colonial (Anglican) church presence in South Farnham Parish/Essex County (1683) comprised two sites, Upper and Lower Piscataway. At the time of the Revolution, the rector, Rev. Alexander Cruden, a Scotsman true to his oath of loyalty to the Crown, returned to England in 1776, leaving the parish “without benefit of clergy.” In 1785, with the organization of the successor Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, the parish sent two delegates as its representatives. In 1791, Andrew Syme, tutor to the Brockenbroughs, a local family, was persuaded to be ordained; he served as rector for two years, followed by a hiatus of twenty years or more, climaxing in 1802 with the seizure by Virginia of glebes and other church properties of the former established church. Revival seems to date from the coming from Maryland of the dynamic leader, Richard Channing Moore, as second bishop of Virginia. In 1817, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Henley deeded a lot on the edge of Tappahannock to be used as an interdenominational house of worship, to be known as Tappahannock Chapel (referred to variously over the years as the Town Chapel, the Free Chapel, etc.). Grantees of the deed were the Protestant Episcopal Church and Episcopalians were given the lead role and use, but not to the exclusion of other denominations: it was to be open also, in order, to “Baptist, Methodist & then to the Presbyterians” in that order. 

The "Town Chapel" was built and until St. John's had their own structure, begun in 1849 Episcopalians shared a worship space with "Baptist, Methodist & then to the Presbyterians” in that order." 

By 1967 just about every denomination had a place of worship, including the Seventh Day Adventists who staffed the only hospital in the county.

St. John's Episcopal Church was the place of my first experience of prayer book worship.  A community wide inter-racial youth group formed under the leadership of Father Daniel Montague gathered there to plan activities including highway trash clean-ups, fund raising for Project Hope, performing a version of Jesus Christ Superstar and most importantly defusing the tensions that rose out of and made desegregation of the schools so difficult.

We were idealistic and hopeful and determined at the very least to "get along."  We did more than that and our reunions are evidence.  But our conversations are tinged with sadness that so much still remains to be done.

Baptists jailed by Anglicans, Episcopalians and Baptists using the same interdenominational chapel, Episcopalians hosting a Baptist's preacher's son at Evening Prayer.  What next?

The Baptists' Arrest

It was March 13, 1774 when John Waller of nearby Spotsylvania County was arrested along with John Shackleford, Robert Ware and Ivison Lewis for preaching without license and jailed in Essex County. The very building where their pleas were heard became the nave of what was Centennial Baptist Church in 1875, later to be renamed in memory of long-time pastor Frank Brown Beale.

Beale Memorial Baptist Church was my father's last full-time pastorate from 1967 to 1978.  The county seat, Tappahannock was the town where I attended high school.

That snippet of history is meant to trigger more a sense of irony than anything else.  The town and parish in which I was first and most positively exposed to Episcopal ways had once imprisoned men who were my father's predecessors.  Indeed the person who brought charges against these men was the rector of what became St. John's parish!

I'm still grateful for how my life has turned; not simply away from Baptist ways but into a larger frame that honors even the irony and reaches back to include the stories of those early struggles for freedom of conscience and expression that gave us our Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights. 

I'm writing this month about those moments where church and state are the principle "actors," maybe call them elements or props for that drama of personal freedom, moral anchoring and consensual authority.  These elements are at play again.

I have an interpretation of the First Amendment that takes these histories of John Smith, Patrick Henry, and John Waller to heart.  I'm not advocating for theocracy in the USA.  I'm not one of those who wants to claim that this nation was founded on Christian principles.  I'm just as sure my "list" of approved teachers for Biblical Content in Public Schools is missing most of those who have advocated for this dreadful Georgia legislation.  I'm not sure even I should be on my own list!

But I think it matters that our faith has always been mixed into the story of what freedom means and how best to insure that freedom for our citizens, immigrants and (yes, even) "illegals."  Without a doubt other concerns get in mixed in as well.  Things like the color of our skin or our first language or sexual orientation or our economic circumstances.

Freedom isn't easy and it doesn't get easier when the imbalance of power gets added to the math.  How fair or just was it for the Rev. Alexander Cruden to call for the arrest of Waller and his colleagues? The use of power is easy to see but where's the freedom in that?

I'm NOT thinking to call for anyone's arrest nor am I intending to get myself arrested but I am asking for your understanding as I struggle with those elements of church and state.  Right now my struggle has me asking these questions:

How easy is it to hide behind those "personal freedom" parts of our faith?  Think "me and Jesus" or "everybody has a right to their own opinion."

What is the moral anchor of the U.S.A. in this century?  Is it "the economy?"  Is it "the way things used to be?" Is it fundamentalistic protestantism? Is it NIMBY? (Not In My BackYard)

What is more or less consensual about our current practice of governance in this constitutional republic form of democracy?  How does gerrymandering -- no matter who started it -- prevent consent?

Our church is not a courthouse but it is where these elements are at play, again.  Let's pray,

". . . And finally, teach our people to rely on your strength and to accept their responsibilities to their fellow citizens, that they may elect trustworthy leaders and make wise decisions for the well-being of our society; that we may serve you faithfully in our generation and honor your holy Name. For yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all. Amen. (BCP, 822)

The Captain's Prayer

Tappahannock, the little tidewater Virginia town I lived in through high school was founded in 1682 and before that, the area was visited by Captain John Smith of Jamestown's founding.  Remnants of Pocahontas' nation of indigenous peoples still populate the southern portion of Essex county.  It was great a place to live and learn history.  Especially those histories of our founding events and people.

In 1606 when John Smith and Christopher Newport set sail from England they were authorized by the same King James I who ordered the English translation of the Bible, now known in many parts of the world as the KJV.   Newport was Captain over the three vessels, the Discovery, the Susan Constant and the Godspeed, with Smith having to wait until landfall to take his charge in establishing the first English speaking settlement in the “New World,” Jamestown.  Smith was not a good passenger and was charged with mutiny only to be saved by the royal charter’s taking effect as soon as they were standing on the banks of the Powhatan River. 

Prayers in English were first prayed in the New World in Jamestown. The Rev. Robert Hunt led the settlers in intercession twice a day -- every day -- as they sought God for wisdom, provision, and protection.  In fact, after the declaration that essentially freed Smith from the charge of mutiny the next official act by the English in the New World was a corporate prayer.

They sailed with much support and hope and some anticipation for economic return on their investment but the longer, landed story of Jamestown is not a good example of “getting one’s money’s worth.”  Mosquitos, rats, harsh weather, and bad relations with the “locals” all made what quickly became bad only get worse.  For sure they never stopped praying.

Their ambitions and actions -- the very ones they prayed to God for success -- included the slaughter and subjugation of those members of the Powhatan nations who preceded them to those tidal riverbanks.  A harsh truth.

But that's how this history thing works.  And as time passes we celebrate differently and we focus our observances to remember more than us and our people. The Episcopal Church in its General Convention of 2009 refuted the "doctrine of discovery" and pledged to remember and celebrate our histories differently.  

That's how this prayer thing works, too.  And it works best when it starts with as broad and generous a view as one's petitions allow.  And it demands -- just like our historicizing -- careful correction and refocusing, especially when we blend our national ambitions into our prayers.  

As Independence Day approaches let's keep our view broad and generous as we pray,

Lord God Almighty, you have made all the peoples of the earth for your glory, to serve you in freedom and in peace: Give to the people of our country a zeal for justice and the strength of forbearance, that we may use our liberty in accordance with your gracious will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (For the Nation, BCP, 258)

  

The Parsons' Cause

I've always been intrigued by the life events leading up to Patrick Henry's stirring words, "Give me liberty or give me death."  And also interested in the place of his speech.  It was from the pulpit of St. John's Church (now Episcopal) in Richmond, VA.  Virginia's Second Convention met there to avoid the King's "attention" as they chose delegates to the Second Continental Congress.  One could say the meeting was all about independence.

Henry's turn was the result of a fairly short and charismatic career as a lawyer.  His father was a judge and prominent member to Hanover county's powerful interests.  Henry did not do well managing the family's interests, including a tavern and after a brief, self directed reading was made a lawyer.

Also interesting to me was his participation in the events of the Parson's Cause.  Forgive me but here is as brief an account as I can find:

The droughts of the 1750s had led to a rise in the price of tobacco. Hard currency was scarce in Virginia, and salaries in the colony were often expressed in terms of pounds of tobacco. Prior to the drought, the price of tobacco had long been twopence per pound (0.45 kilograms) and in 1755 and 1758, the Virginia House of Burgesses, the elected lower house of the colonial legislature, passed Two Penny Acts, allowing debts expressed in tobacco to be paid at the rate of twopence per pound for a limited period. These payees included public officials, including Anglican clergy—[The Church of England] was then Virginia's established church, and several ministers petitioned the Board of Trade in London to overrule the Burgesses, which it did. Five clergymen then brought suit for back pay, cases known as the Parson's Cause; of them, only the Reverend James Maury was successful, and a jury was to be empaneled in Hanover County on December 1, 1763 to fix damages. Henry was engaged as counsel by Maury's parish vestry for this hearing. Patrick Henry's father, Colonel John Henry, was the presiding judge.^[*] Wikipedia - Patrick Henry

I'm relearning all these things that were buried in my 1972 Essex County, Virginia high school brain.  And as I'm relearning them I'm also reliving a long interest in what is now an even more difficult relationship between church and state.

My father pastored a Baptist church in Tappahannock just 50 miles from Henry's Hanover that worshipped in what had been the second courthouse of the county.  Built in 1728, it was renovated in 1875 to add a steeple to what was a featureless exterior.  The current Essex courthouse looks broad shouldered and more like a church than its predecessor.

Not only all this but through other moments of my upbringing I'm now, it seems always of a mind uneasily managing my place as a parish priest and a public citizen.  And I can't but hear Henry's famous words as full of a spirit that is more than patriotism.   But "custom" warrants more restraint than the freedom loving citizen in me can exercise sometimes.   Do we mean the same thing when we say liberty now? What is this thing we call Christian in the United States in 2019? How do we honor those like Henry now?

Easter Expansion

Some of you may be wondering how I'm still writing under the Easter . . . "umbrella."  Short answer, everything in our lives as Christians comes from Easter.  Remove the event of the resurrection of our Lord and we would be without the one thing that makes Jesus the Christ.  There's a longer answer to follow because I really want to write about how the Easter event becomes ours and how we are best equipped to share it in the way that Pentecost intends.

Pentecost is an Easter holiday.  As the last day of the special season of resurrection focus and celebration, Pentecost does not close down our observance but accelerates it, distributes it,  and shares it.

The story from Luke's Acts of the Apostles is that Jews returning to Jerusalem to observe the Festival of Weeks heard the languages they had learned living and growing up away from Jerusalem being spoken and the message was the same no matter the speaker.  Peter finished his acknowledgement of this shared amazement by quoting the Prophet Joel and closed with "Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Acts 2:21, NRSV)

Pretty simple, don't you think?  Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.  Simple but apparently not easy.  I say apparently because so many of our modern day versions of being Christian are not "calling on the name . . ." but are more war-like or even worse more commercial.

So much of what we do is to preserve and protect a territory -- we call it "the church" -- or research and market a product and we call that holiness.  We recruit, we indoctrinate, we keep score like it's a zero sum game to be won.  Some Christians are worse than others but we are all guilty of trying to keep up with the Joneses. 

When evangelism is done using the same metrics as advertising -- think "market share" -- the actions we take leave little room for our own calling on the name.  Instead we perfect "elevator speeches" and employ Harvard's best business models for things like purpose, message and feedback.

What Peter says is simpler but harder because it means telling the truth about ourselves first and from that ground to call.  And our calling sends a message that we understand something important about the one to whom we are speaking. When Peter repeats Joel's prophecy he is admitting that even as we have these new powers to utter praise in the languages of others we are acknowledging the greater power of the one to whom our cries ascend. 

That's because there's more to "the name" than an identification of the person.  Especially in this case Peter is talking power and authority, God's power, God's authority now known and demonstrated in Jesus who died and was raised. Hear the Easter echoes? 

Our salvation is NOT withheld until we reach a committee approved benchmark or until we have honed a skill down to a "bright brass" shine or dotted all our eyes and flawlessly crossed ourselves. 

God's help -- our salvation -- is always ready because everyday is Easter.  God's help will not be forced on us but only waits for our honesty, our confession, our respect and our gratitude. 

Easter Reprise

Most of you know of the untimely and tragic death of Rachel Held Evans. I've already written about her and will continue to in the months ahead.  She understood Easter as a lesson to be learned as it calls us to die to sin while we are still breathing and eating and sleeping and loving.  

One of the ways she "died" was to re-examine her understanding of scriptural authority.  In her identifying work  A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband "Master" (Thomas Nelson; October 30, 2012) she took seriously the commands that governed the lives of women.  She lived each one of them. She worked to understand them as antique but relevant in how they showed the ancient and faithful minds of those first believers.

She had to acknowledge that there was much that no longer needed practicing: social behaviors regarding menstruation, dress, leadership, teaching, etc.  Not just because we are no longer living biblically ourselves but because we have learned so much that was not known two thousand years ago.  And so she had to die to that teaching and find her way to living faithfully in the 21st century.  

To get there she had to admit something about all of us who take the bible seriously in the modern age.  Here's how she said it:

For those who count the Bible as sacred, the question when interpreting and applying the Bible to our lives is not, will we pick and choose? But rather how will we pick and choose? We are all selective in our reading of Scripture, and so the question we have to ask ourselves is this: Are we reading with the prejudice of love or are we reading with the prejudices of judgment and power, self-interest and greed? (295)

Are we reading with the prejudice of love?  Are we reading with a heart like the one Jesus showed his disciples in the upper room as he knelt before them -- including Judas -- and washed their feet?  Are we reading in "obedience to death" so the maddening cycle of scapegoats, sacrifices, and wars and walls and waste does not pass through us?  

How are we reading scripture when we leave out our public lives from its directions or only accept Jesus as our personal savior?  How are we reading scripture when we excuse poverty as a lack of initiative and will.  How are we reading scripture when we destroy aquifers with fracking for fossil fuels we will not need? How are we reading scripture when we only claim Jesus' judgement on our enemies so that we are the ones redeemed?  

Before Rachel's sad and painful passing she died to a bunch of unexamined beliefs that were masquerading as faith.  Easter's lesson,  still for us to learn and to which we must be obedient to our deaths is God is ready to raise us from a death of "the prejudices of judgement and power, self-interest and greed." 

Easter Rest

FrDann is resting this week on Jekyll Island.

Easter Authority

The practice of observing and celebrating Easter through and including Pentecost is not the way things have always been done.  Indeed there are lots of places where the paschal candle is extinguished and removed during the Ascension service.

That association of Jesus, as the one raised from the dead with the flame that first burns before we finish our prayers huddled in the dark predawn of the Great Vigil speaks to that foundational understanding that we are first and foremost Easter people.

Even as we rehearse the pain and fear, like that which brought the disciples back behind the locked doors of the upper room we rely on his kindled presence with us, singly lighting our way up to the first Alleluia of release and celebration.

And he is with us for a proper 40 days as the one raised so that we might enjoy a fulfilling transition to our own joys of resurrection living.

But I'll confess that I can't find much about how extinguishing that symbolic light with 10 days still to go until Pentecost was understood.  Or better said, I can't find much on what Christians did during those ten days that helped with teaching or confirming some truth or lesson.

Some understood Ascension as more than Christ's removal to God's right hand in glory, and the theological implication is that the Ascension was the final redemptive act conferring participation in the divine life on all who are members of Christ. In other words, Christ “was lifted up into heaven so that he might make us partakers of his Godhead.”

Pentecost finishes and expands that partaking.  But I still can't find much about how we should proceed liturgically through these last 10 days until the Holy Spirit crowns us with her fire.

But we can know this: the wounds that confirmed for Thomas that it was his beloved teacher now raised and acclaimed as "Lord and God," go with Jesus and are before God the Father while we await the harvest of power that is Pentecost.

If everything before the cross was God with us in the flesh of the carpenter's son, then everything after he ascends is our flesh with God.  And God knows all the more to whom the Holy Spirit descends with power and gifts.

Easter Correction

"And Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus, and said, Ye men of Athens, in all things, I perceive that ye are very religious.  For as I passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. What therefore ye worship in ignorance, this I set forth unto you. (Acts 17: 22-23, New American Standard)

It didn't start with Paul in Athens but this is easily the most obvious moment in the long history of the Judeo-Christian people where the practice of another culture was appropriated and corrected into orthodox use.

The first verses in Genesis borrowed their theme and structure from the Babylonians and include the correction in describing how the creator God (Elohim/אֱלֹהִים) made a "big light to rule the day and a little light to rule the night."  It as a clear jab at the Sun and Moon Gods of the Babylonian pantheon now reduced to the status of creature made by  אֱלֹהִים on day four.  

Important to our current context are the ways in which the Feast of the Resurrection of our Lord finds it's place in the calendar.  For centuries long before the one including Jesus of Nazareth the ancient world marked the day when daylight became more than half of a full day's cycle from sunset to sunset.  We still call it the spring equinox.  

Good observation of the movement of the sun across the sky measured by length of shadows and locations on the horizon helped the ancients to know when the day was to occur.  It meant success, again.  It meant light had returned to its place of authority and presence and reliability.

Easter -- as the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus -- also recasts ancient pagan religious standards and tells our story of how God's Word/Light/Son was returned to a place of authority and presence and reliability.

There is no need for us to worry about the facts here.  There is and has always been a need to bring meaning to them, to make sense of them.  So when Paul stands and proclaims the "unknown" god is knowable by having acted in human history in particular by raising Jesus from the dead, Paul is correcting a set of meanings.

It is encouraging to see human history move from one understanding to the next, from sun gods, to big lights, from Ishtar's fertility to Easter's trustworthiness, from unknown gods to knowable God.  Our correction is to thank God for them but to see beyond the sun and moons, to think beyond our own inventiveness and trust God to make God's self known to us.  

Our Easter correction is still timed by finding the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox.  But we do not worship the calendar, the sun, or the moon.  We give God thanks and praise for being one with us and just like us to have died and by returning to that place of authority, and presence, and trustworthiness to give us hope in our lives right now and forever, not just once a year.